All Forum Posts by: Ashley Vellon

Hello BP!

My husband, @Luis Vellon, and I decided to move our growing family from Florida to Phoenix this year in March. He played poker professionally and I was an assistant principal, but we decided to embark on an adventure and take the plunge working together to start a real estate investment business. We are excited to see (and hope!) that many of the skills that made us successful in those areas are transferable to our real estate investment.  

We created our company, Sweet Nickel Investments, and read @J Scott's The Book on Flipping Houses and The Book on Estimating Rehab Costs. What an incredible resource! We also networked IRL and learned tons of information from the forums and amazing community at Bigger Pockets.

Though we live in Phoenix and it is the area we would most like to focus on, we just completed our first SFH in the Tucson market which led to negotiating our second project as we speak (both in the University of Arizona area). We remodeled this first house after buying it from my husband's parents with a lease to own contract and flipping it. Plans changed and we remodeled it and kept it in the family as a rental, with his parents reimbursing us and paying for the proceeds we likely would have pocketed, based on our estimated ARV. We completed the project by getting a private investor to loan us 50% of the funds needed.

In addition to everything we read, we learned a ton from the experience of completing this project and are hoping to continue to improve on our business and systems. Right now creating deal flow and finding quality projects seems to be our biggest challenge. We would love some feedback on what BP think of this deal or any of the above:

Planned to buy the 3bd,2ba property for 140K and remodel and create a fourth bedroom by sectioning off a piece of the large living room area and extending the hallway to the fourth bedroom.  

Our costs, with brief descriptions, are below:

TLDR (If we stuck with the initial plan of selling at ARV):

Bought property for: $140,000

Renovation Cost: $64,890

Holding Costs:  $5,196

Estimated Commission and Closing Costs:  $13,368

Cost for Private Investor Money:  $1750

ARV Estimate: $240,000

Profit:  $14,796

Our initial goal was to make $24,000 or 10% of the sales price, but obviously we made some mistakes :).

These are some before pictures:  

After Remodel Pictures:

Your honest feedback would be wonderful and thanks for taking the time to read this.  We really appreciate all the knowledge the Bigger Pockets community has to offer and look forward to interacting with so many inspiring people!

Ashley and Luis Vellon

@Justin Ellis, thanks for the response and I sent you a message so we can connect and discuss those items.  We are ready to buy and will be interested in seeing the deals you have to offer.  We hope to chat or meet soon.

@Jay Chang, thanks for the good luck and for introducing yourself.  Would love to learn more about what you are doing in the multifamily market in PHX.  

Hi All,

My husband and I recently started a real estate investment company and completed our first single family home in Tucson, AZ. We are looking to get into the Phoenix market and are working to establish deal flow.

We've researched deal flow through Bigger Pockets and other resources and are looking for:

• How to generate leads for homes or locate individuals who have leads
• Other strategies to establish deal flow or other important information to know while entering the Phoenix market

Thank you for your help and we'd love your feedback/ideas, even if they do not directly pertain to the AZ markets!

We'd love to network with others in the Phoenix or Tucson markets and plan to attend future meet ups!

Ashley Vellon